


A Love Story in Six Rescues

by celli



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, M/M, Pining, Star Trek Holidays 2019, medical emergencies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21694333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/pseuds/celli
Summary: Five times Jim Kirk didn't die, and one time someone else didn't either.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 9
Kudos: 118
Collections: Star Trek Holidays 2019





	A Love Story in Six Rescues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joanne_c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_c/gifts).



> Thanks to my betas missmollyetc and chaneen for saving me from myself repeatedly, and to the multiple people who helped me brainstorm!
> 
> Joanne_c, I tried to give you as many of your prompts as I could fit into one story, I hope you enjoy!

_1\. Starfleet Academy_

The first time was at the most boring time imaginable: a random dinner on a random day about three months into their tenure at Starfleet Academy. 

Leonard was telling the latest story about the idiots he saw in the Academy clinic. “And then he tried to show us how the phaser got wedged in there and made it worse.” He gestured. Jim snorted around the bite of his apple he’d just taken, eyes gleeful. “It took three of us to dislodge it, including Nurse Rogers.”

“And how do things go with Nurse Rogers, anyway?” Jim interrupted.

“They don’t _go_ , you bucket of hormones,” Leonard snapped. “You can find a person attractive and not hunt him like a deer, you know.”

“A deer?” Jim laughed more and took another bite. “What a way with words, Bones.”

“I can’t believe I’ll be having this talk with my daughter in a few years,” Leonard groused, mostly to himself.

“Your--” Jim inhaled, choked, and almost immediately turned a startling color of red. He groped at Leonard’s arm.

“Jim, are you okay?”

Jim grabbed his throat, pounded on his chest. He looked at Leonard, panicked. 

The most basic of medical training kicked in. Leonard jumped out of his seat. “Can you breathe?” 

Jim shook his head ‘no’ frantically. 

“Stand up.” Leonard rounded the table. He pounded Jim’s back five times, then put his arms around him and performed five abdominal thrusts. He checked Jim, who was starting to turn pale and droop, then went through the cycle again. On the third abdominal thrust, Jim suddenly started coughing and a piece of apple landed in Leonard’s mashed potatoes. Jim began sucking in lungfuls of air.

“Oh, thank God,” Leonard said. He left his arms around Jim until he seemed like he could stand on his own, then let go but stayed close. Other students and professors had started to stir; Leonard waved them down.

“You have a daughter?” Jim asked, wheezing.

“Come on, we need to get you to the clinic. The Heimlich maneuver can damage a rib.”

“Seriously, a _daughter_?”

Leonard put a hand on Jim’s shoulder and nudged. “Focus, Jim!”

“I am focused!” Jim insisted. “When were you going to mention this?”

Leonard shrugged. “I haven’t?” He shepherded Jim outside and in the direction of the clinic.

“I think me nearly dying proves that.”

Leonard rolled his eyes. “Okay, Snow White.”

Jim stopped in the middle of the path. “What’s her name?”

“Joanna,” Leonard said. Then, quietly, “Her mother...I don’t like to talk about it.”

Jim’s hand landed on his shoulder, and maybe out of everyone, he should have expected some understanding from this quarter. “Okay, Bones. Let’s go.”

* * *

_2\. After the Narada_

The second time was a little more noteworthy. After the endless days of debriefing; after the awards and honors that were partly meant and partly meant for show, to convince the Federation that all things Starfleet were still well; and while the _Enterprise_ was being put back together and prepped for its next mission, one tiny little matter remained to be dealt with.

“Fucking Romulans,” Jim said, yanking on the bottom of his newly acquired dress uniform shirt as they walked through the hallways of Starfleet HQ. It brought out his eyes, which Leonard planned to tell him precisely never.

“I would suggest not making that reference in front of them,” Spock said as he walked next to him. He sounded as unruffled as always, but Leonard, bookending Jim’s other side, had his suspicions.

“Fucking diplomatic receptions, then,” Jim said. “How’s that? ‘You killed my people, I killed yours, let’s drink to it.’ Should loosen us up nicely for the talks tomorrow.”

“I think we should probably be seen and not heard,” Leonard said. “If you can handle that, Jim.”

“I can be the soul of discretion,” Jim said, affronted.

Leonard looked over to see Spock’s raised eyebrow.

Any hopes they had of lying low were dashed as soon as they walked into the large, airy HQ rotunda. “The famous Captain Kirk and Commander Spock!” a voice boomed from off to their side, and a Romulan who looked enough like Nero to have Leonard on alert bore down upon them. All three of them braced. A slighter Romulan man, but one that certainly still looked like he could break Bones in half, and a Romulan woman with the quietly imposing air of a bodyguard followed him through the crowd.

Amazingly, he stopped and inclined his head a fraction of an inch. “I am Ambassador Cretak,” he said. “I...regret your losses, Captain, Commander.”

Kirk stared at him. Just before Leonard was about to kick him to get him to remember his manners, he bowed and replied, “Please accept my regrets as well.” 

He sounded diplomatic, but there was a set to his jaw as he straightened that meant Leonard would be hearing about this for weeks. Next to him, Spock murmured something in Romulan that probably wasn’t a profanity.

Cretak stalked off and the bodyguard followed, leaving everyone staring after them. The Romulan left behind sighed. “It is a difficult time for our diplomatic efforts,” he said. He offered his hand to Jim unexpectedly; Leonard didn’t have much experience with Romulans, but both Jim and Spock certainly looked taken aback. Jim shook his hand gingerly while Spock pointedly folded his own hands behind his back. “Your efforts towards the cause of peace have been noticed,” he said, and hurried off after the ambassador.

Leonard watched him go, confused. “I’m no diplomat, but was that--”

“Weird? Yeah,” Jim said.

“I found it abnormal behavior as well,” Spock said.

“His hands were clammy, too,” Jim said, wiping his hand off on his trousers. “Nervous Romulans, now I’ve seen everything.”

Pike wheeled up to them a moment later, and Jim immediately went on what for him was his best behavior. Some day, Leonard might clue Jim in on exactly why that behavior looked so much like flirting, but if Jim wasn’t going to notice his crush on his boss, might be best to let sleeping dogs lie. And for now, anyway, Leonard had to move on to his main job: Keep Jim From a Diplomatic Incident. He kept an eye on that clammy-handed assistant all night, though, even though the Romulan made no move to approach them again.

Jim started walking the line of too expansive as the evening progressed, which Leonard solved with the simple expedient of putting either Spock or Pike in his path any time it threatened to get out of hand. He knew from long experience that trying to slow Jim’s roll himself would just egg him on to higher heights.

They said good night to everyone, including the still strange group of Romulans and a mostly amused Admiral Pike, and headed back to their temporary quarters at ‘Fleet HQ.

“Good God, Jim, how much did you drink before I came to get you?” Leonard asked when Jim kept walking off course and into Leonard’s path. “I was with you all night and you hardly touched anything.”

Jim looked wounded. “I was on my _best_ behavior for you, Bones. Wasn’t I, Spock?”

“It is true that no one at the party was propositioned or had hands laid on them in anger,” Spock said obediently.

“...Stop being on my side, I changed my mind,” Jim said. He sighed long and loud. “I’m not gonna like this hangover, am I.”

“Nope,” Leonard said cruelly. They stopped in front of Jim’s quarters; Spock nodded at them both and continued on to his. “See you in the morning, Jim.”

“Aw, c’mon, you’re just leaving me like this?” Jim asked.

Leonard rolled his eyes. “I should.”

“But are you?” Jim looked up at Leonard through his lashes. It was disturbingly effective.

Leonard sighed. “Come on,” he said, grabbing Jim by the arm and leading the way to his own quarters. “Let me get you a hypo.”

Jim beamed triumphantly.

Leonard let them both into his quarters and left Jim to contemplate his life choices in the living area while he grabbed his med kit. “So how many drinks _did_ you have before we got there?” he asked as he rummaged through it.

Jim’s voice was even more slurred. “I told you, I was bein’ good, I had a beer with Sulu and ’sit.”

Leonard went still. “Three drinks? My ass, you got drunk off of three drinks.”

There was silence behind him. Leonard spun around. Jim was slumped in the chair, eyes closed.

Leonard hit the comm on the wall. “McCoy to Emergency Medical! My quarters, immediately. Captain Kirk is unconscious.” His hands were sure on his tricorder as he scanned Jim, and he was distantly surprised, given how frantically his heart was beating. “Sending vitals now.”

“Received, Doctor McCoy,” a computer’s voice said. “Sending team to your location.”

“Bones?”

Leonard woke, stretching his stiff neck, and unfolded from the sleep chair to see Jim blinking at him from the bed.

“Good morning,” he said.

“When I asked you for a hangover cure, I didn’t think you meant Sickbay,” Jim said.

“Hangover cures I keep in my room. Poisoning cures I keep in Sickbay.”

Jim struggled to sit up. “Poisoning?”

Spock spoke up from the doorway. “It appears a faction of the Romulan government is less interested in diplomatic relationships than we thought.”

“Your damp-handed friend,” Leonard said.

“Goddamn Romulans,” Jim said, falling back into bed. “Thank fuck you were there, Bones.”

“Yeah,” Leonard said gruffly, not wanting to dwell upon how close he’d been to turning down Jim’s puppy dog eyes the night before. “Now shut up and rest so we can get into space. Maybe fewer people will want you dead there, though I doubt it.”

As he turned away, he caught Spock looking at him, one eyebrow raised, and pushed past him into the hall.

* * *

_3\. Transfusions and Tribbles_

Two weeks after the third time:

Spock found him in the lab they’d given him, trying not to drip tears on the Tribble that, as far as Leonard was concerned, had damn well saved Jim’s life. Chekov had named it Trotsky, much to his own amusement if no one else’s.

“I fail to see why the Captain’s successful reanimation has produced such a negative reaction in you, Doctor,” he said.

Leonard sniffed hard under the guise of returning Trotsky to its rightful spot under a warming light. “Isn’t there a computer diagnostic you could be having a heart-to-heart with right now instead of me, Spock?”

An actual expression crossed Spock’s face, and Leonard realized with horror that Spock was going to attempt to discuss feelings with him. “I, too, was concerned for the Captain’s health. However--”

“He should have died,” Leonard said bluntly. “He should have fucking died. If there hadn’t been a giant shitshow of coincidences, we’d be standing next to a headstone in Iowa right now.”

“I think you underestimate your capabilities as Chief Medical Officer, Doctor McCoy.” Spock drew a breath. “But I also think that I may have underestimated the depth of your friendship for Captain Kirk, and for that I apologize.”

“Yeah, something like that,” Leonard muttered.

“I...shall see myself out,” Spock said, and the door closed silently behind him, leaving Leonard with his Tribble, his might-have-beens, and his stupid fucking feelings.

* * *

_4\. Two Years In_

Somewhere around the fourth time, what numbskull would keep track of these things anyway:

“Come on, come on!” Leonard was shouting at his medical staff almost before they materialized in medbay. “Get him on the bed!”

They got Jim on the floatbed, Leonard standing beside him with his hands still clamped down on the wound in Jim’s side. M’Benga and his staff were right there with the pressure bandages and Leonard lifted his hands. “Go, go, I’ll scrub in and join,” he said, and they rushed off to the surgical room.

“Doctor,” Spock said over the comm. Leonard bit back a curse. “Report.”

“You’ll have to get the story from Uhura or Hendorff,” Leonard said, already halfway into the scrub area. “I came around a corner to find Jim with a knife in him; that’s what I know.”

“And the Captain’s status?”

“Will be better when I can get into surgery, which I can do when you leave me alone, Mr. Spock!”

“Understood.”

Leonard waited for the comm to cut off, allowed himself one long shaky breath, and pulled his bloody shirt off.

Three hours of hand-cramping surgery later, and Jim was in his usual bed in Sickbay, vitals weak but stabilizing, and Leonard was at his desk with his usual post-danger drink. Around him, everything hummed along as though his heart hadn’t been in danger of stopping in his chest again. A man could get used to this.

(No, he couldn’t.)

Leonard took another drink and indulged in a fantasy where he transferred somewhere he wouldn’t have to see Jim almost die all the time. The problem with that, he had to admit, was that if he didn’t see Jim, he couldn’t _save_ Jim.

“I hate my life,” he muttered.

An alert at his desk pinged that Jim was coming out of anesthesia; Leonard set down his drink and moved to the bed. Vitals were improving nicely, he noticed, and tucked two fingers against Jim’s carotid to check his pulse the old-fashioned way.

Jim’s eyes blinked open and he reached up to bat at Leonard’s hand, grabbing onto it after some effort. “Bones,” he said. “Gave me the good stuff.”

“Take it easy, Jim,” Leonard said, “you know how drunk you get on this.”

“Question. Was it the blood loss or did you take out a guy twice your size with a medkit and a left hook before I passed out?”

“He was in between me and my patient,” Leonard said gruffly.

Jim tried to laugh and ended up gasping for breath. “I like you, Bones,” he said.

“Good to know,” Leonard said, his heart contracting painfully in his chest.

But then Jim turned his face into the back of the hand he was still hanging onto. While Leonard watched in confusion and disbelief, Jim kissed his fingers, tugged their joined hands under his cheek, and fell asleep again.

Leonard was not going to feel hopeful or heart-warmed. He was not.

(Yes, he was.)

* * *

_5\. Starbase Yorktown_

“Bones!”

“I’m busy, Jim!”

“ _Bones_!”

Leonard turned around from where he’d been running the regenerator on Spock and caught the swelling in Jim’s cheeks from across the room. “Goddammit,” he said. “Stay put, Commander.”

He crossed to Jim’s bed in a few quick strides. “Did they give you a broad spectrum antibiotic? Did you let them give you a broad spectrum antibiotic, Jim?”

Jim lifted a shoulder in a way that would have been charming if his lips weren’t already starting to turn blue.

Leonard sighed, grabbed the hypospray already loaded with steroids in his medkit, and jammed it into Jim’s throat.

“Ow!” Jim yelped.

“Don’t ‘ow’ me, Captain,” Leonard said, brushing Jim’s hair back away from his face as he bent to check his pupils. “Don’t let strange doctors give you strange medicines, how many times do I have to tell you? And why can no one in this galaxy read a damn allergy workup?” He jabbed at the vitals screen behind Jim until the allergy warning lit up red across the top of it.

“I knew you were right here,” Jim said, his cheeks still puffy, and Leonard groaned.

“I’m going back to Spock. Try not to have your life threatened until his ribs are repaired at the least, will you?”

“I make no promises,” Jim said, grinning, and Leonard leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “Also I know you just checked my temperature doing that.”

“Country doctor secrets,” Leonard said solemnly. “No more excitement, I’m not built for it.”

Jim just laughed, took the hand still in his hair, and kissed it. “Literally no one believes you anymore after that joyride you and Spock took saving me, you know that, right?”

“Shut up and let me go treat my other patient, and I might let you take that video call that’s been coming in for you since word got back to Starfleet.” Leonard gave Jim’s hand one last squeeze and walked away. Over his shoulder, he said, “There’s an Admiral back on Earth wants to make sure you’re okay for some reason.”

* * *

_+1. Daystrom_

“Bones?”

Leonard dropped out of his modified lurk near the entrance to Starfleet Headquarters and turned to face Jim. “I’m not here, you never saw me. See, I’m here on medical business.” He waved his medkit in the air.

“You are here, I did see you, and get your ass back to the _Enterprise_ ,” Jim said. “She can only afford so many of her senior officers in trouble at once, okay?”

“And don’t we have a world of conversations to have on the topic,” Leonard said, “but I have time to discuss it with you. I need to talk to that hobgoblin before he disappears onto the _Bradbury_.”

“Bones,” Jim said again.

“Jim,” Leonard said. “He sold you out. He sold the _Enterprise_ out. If you think he’s not going to get a piece of Lavinia McCoy’s son’s mind, you are out of yours.”

“Then record him a message,” Jim said. He turned and stalked off.

Leonard snorted to himself. Had Jim _met_ him? He waited until Jim had taken the elevator up and then made for the stairs. If he couldn’t catch Spock on the way into the meeting, he could catch him out the back.

He was half a flight from the conference room when the explosions started.

The room was chaos, men and women shouting and diving, but Leonard’s eye first went to Chris Pike, already hit once, trying to get up and across the room. Leonard ran to him and pulled him up. A shot from outside the window took out a wall right behind them, but Leonard was too busy pulling Pike behind a wall to flinch. He nearly ran into Spock, bringing in another wounded captain, and leaned in close to start triage while the blasts raged just beyond him.

By the time Jim ran around the corner and went pale at the sight of them, Leonard had Pike stabilized and was directing the emergency crews to help all the wounded he’d gathered. 

“Oh, my God--” Jim started. Leonard jumped to his feet and grabbed Jim’s shoulders.

“He’s gonna be okay, Jim. It looks bad but he’ll make it.”

Jim sagged in his grip a little. “Thank you. Jesus, Bones, thank you.” He brought one hand up to cover Leonard’s hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Someone called his name and then Jim was off and running, as always, but Leonard felt the echo of that grip on his hand for a long time.


End file.
